Charles-Eric Légaré of the Cape Breton Screaming Eagles, left, battles for the puck with Moncton Wildcats captain Christophe Lalonde during Quebec Major Junior Hockey League action Saturday at Centre 200 in Sydney. The Eagles defeated the Wildcats 5-3.

It was a slow start for the Eagles who were behind by three goals in the first period after Moncton's Conor Garland netted a pair of goals, followed by a single marker from Ivan Barbashev.

Maxim Lazarev responded for Cape Breton before the end of the frame.

"I liked the way we started the game, leg-wise, but we lacked grit and we played too fancy," said Eagles head coach and general manager Marc-Andre Dumont. "As soon as we decide to play with more heart we were the only team on the ice."

In the second frame, Lazarev netted his second goal of the night to narrow Moncton's lead to 3-2.

Raphaël Corriveau tied the game at 3-3, just four minutes and 19 seconds into the third, followed by back-to-back goals from Julien Pelletier at 10:11 and Cameron Darcy at 11:01.

Cape Breton dominated the game on shots, leading by 10-9 in the first, followed by 20-4 in the second and 13-8 in the third.

Eagles netminder Alex Bureau made 12 saves in 45:24, while Zachary Fortin made six saves in just under 14:36.

Moncton goalie Alex Dubeau made 38 saves in the loss.

"Dubeau made some very nice saves in the first half of the game because he out-worked us, and at the moment where we started out-working him, we scored goals," said Dumont. "It's a comeback. We were down 3-0 and we came back from that. And it's a good sign for our development."

Both teams picked up plenty of infractions after several brawls broke out in the final two frames, with Moncton players spending 25 minutes in the penalty box, while Cape Breton racked up 21 penalty minutes.

"There was a little bit of a scuffle toward the end of the game," said Eagles captain Stephen Woodworth. "It was a little bit dirty toward the end, and those things happen in hockey. They weren't very pleased with the result of the game and they showed it."

Moncton was 0-for-3 on the powerplay, while Cape Breton was 0-for-4.

"I think we got off to a slow start," said Woodworth. "We were managing to get a lot of opportunities on net and got a lot of shots and managed to out shoot them but we felt we could do a lot of things better and progressively over the course of the game, we did, we got a lot better."

At the end of the game, Moncton goaltender Dubeau furiously broke his stick off the team's net.